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Daily Archives: August 25, 2008

I mentioned a while back that I am a Boy Scout. OK, maybe my boyhood days are long gone, but I still consider myself to be a Scout. I learned many lessons as a Scout; lessons that continue to serve me well today. One of those is KIS or Keep It Simple.

I remember learning primitive camping skills. Many novice campers would bring too much gear, requiring hauling and storing it, and just in general complicating camp life. The simple (KIS) approach is to bring only what you absolutely need. Many novice campers would also select poor camp sites and then spend time dealing with dampness, bugs, discomfort, safety issues and more. The simple approach is to avoid those issues by selecting a good camp site. Then in both cases, you spend all that saved time enjoying the camp and doing what you came to do. KIS pays off.

KIS applies equally well to many aspects of simulation. When things go wrong, it can often be traced back to too much complexity.

How many people are subjected to overly complex management procedures?

Are the procedures used for planning and tracking your work making the most effective use of everyone’s time?

Is every aspect of your work done effectively?

The basic concept of KIS is to do just enough to do it well and no more! Does this mean you should not do your best? No. But it does mean that you should segment your work into small phases and KIS on each phase.

In model-building for example, let’s say a stakeholder expresses desire for a detailed model for the 10 areas of his system. One common approach is to go off and create exactly what the stakeholder asked for. Unfortunately, this will probably be wrong. A better approach is to pick one representative area, and do a very high-level model of that one area. Then review that model and results with the stakeholder. In most cases, you will both learn a lot and you may jointly decide on a different approach. Then perhaps do a detailed model of that same area or perhaps extend that high-level model to a few more areas. Again you will probably learn something that will change your approach or objectives. For each phase, you want to do the simplest thing (KIS) that will meet the objectives for that phase. In this way, you will minimize any wasted effort and come much more quickly to exactly what the stakeholder needs.

Let’s consider model-building at a much more detailed level. A common mistake by novices is to build a large section of a model (perhaps even an entire system) all at once. And then you hit “Go” and it does not work. Why doesn’t it work? There are perhaps a thousand possible reasons to investigate. Even worse, there are most likely dozens of small or large problems, each potentially obscuring the others. Verifying and validating such a model is a daunting task. A much better approach is to start by selecting a very small (KIS) portion of the model to build and verify that it works. Then repeat. When a problem is discovered in any new section, it is generally easy to find it because you know it is a result of that latest section just added. Again, “Keep It Simple”.

Remember, Keep It Simple. Work effectively and exceed your stakeholder expectations one simple step at a time.